LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE UNENDING GENESIS; 



OR, 



CREATION EVER PRESENT. 



BY 

II. M. SIMMONS. 




1883 



Copyright, 1882, 
By II. M. Simmons. 



Shepard & Johnston, Printers, 140 to 146 Monroe St., Chicago. 



Tins little work aims to tell briefly and simply 
the new story of Creation. The Greek name Genesis 
is kept in the title, not only on account of its old 
and sacred use, but because its original meaning of 
birth, — a meaning which also appears in the Latin 
name of Nature, — makes it a most appropriate term 
for the natural creation which science sees. This 
Creation, — so much vaster than the Biblical story 
shows, not ''ended'' then or since, but never-ceasing 
and everywhere still seen, and wrought so or- 
derly and beautifully through continual birth and 
growth, — leads to so much larger and more rev- 
erent thoughts of the creative Power, that it is 
hoped the book may have even a religious value. 

H. M. S. 

Minneapolis, Nov. 21, 1882. 



CONTEXTS. 



I. The Old Genesis Story ...... 9 

II. The Firmament of Space 19 

III. Worlds Rounded and Rolling . 27 

IV. Worlds W armed 35 

V. "Let there be Light" 41 

VI. Compounds and Crystals 51 

VII. Sea and Land 59 

VIII. The Air Firmament 07 

IX. Plant Creation 77 

X. Animal Creation 87 

XI. The Mental Dominion 97 

XII. Moral and Spiritual Creations . . . 107 



THE OLD GENESIS STORY. 



I 



THE OLD GENESIS STORY. 

Our Bible begins with a chapter on the Gen- 
esis of the world and its inhabitants. The story 
has much in common with that on the old 
Assyrian tablets recently discovered at Nineveh, 
and probably both were derived from those older 
Babylonian legends which have furnished much 
to the opening chapters of the Bible. But the 
story has assumed new beauty under the Hebrew 
pen. Its style is concise and simple, its thought 
poetic. Instead of the various heathen deities, 
it now shows the Hebrew God as Creator. Nor 
does it, as many suppose, rudely picture a viable 
deity mechanically shaping all things. It rather 
represents a Creator speaking with majestic 
commands: "Let there be light"; " Let the 
waters be gathered together"; "Let the earth 
bring forth/' These phrases seem almost to 
indicate the conception of a spirit working,, 
unseen and silent, through the fiat of law. And 



10 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



the whole chapter, so simple, calm and strong, 
merits its high rank among ancient cosmogonies. 

But of course we do not expect perfection in 
it. The magnitude of the world being still 
unknown, the story innocently made creation 
brief, — the work of a few days. Naturally, too, 
the legend was influenced by that more ancient 
institution, the Sabbath, and the work made to 
fill just a week. 

For long before this account was written the 
week was widely kept as a sacred division of 
time. It seems to have originated in the old 
worship of the seven visible planets, including 
sun and moon. To these planets, or gods, as 
they were often fancied, many things were dedi- 
cated in series of sevens, and among them the 
successive days. Marks of the old custom still 
remain in our names Sunday and Monday or 
Moon-day. Our names of the next four days 
are taken from corresponding Teutonic gods, 
but in the French language we still see them 
called after the planets: Mardi or Mars' day; 
Mercredi or Mercury's day; Jeudi or Jupiter's 
day; and Vendredi or Venus' day. The seventh 
was consecrated to the farthest planet, and we 
still call it Saturday or Saturn's day. On account 



THE OLD GENESIS STORY. 



11 



of the gloomy notions about this last slow 
planet and god, this seventh day was kept aus- 
terely as a day of rest by the ancient Babylon- 
ians, and in that sen>e was called Sabattu by 
the later Assyrians. From these people the 
Israelites >eem to have derived their Sabbath, 
and they soon made it a most prominent part of 
their religious system. 

Hence the Sabbath inevitably influenced the 
ancient speculations and helped to shape this 
story. Men* liked to date so old and sacred a 
reslxlay from the Creation itself, and easily fan- 
cied that it arose from a divine rest there. And 
as they, in preparation for this rest, finished their 
work in six days, so they fancied the Creator had 
finished his. Thus the seven days naturally took 
their place in the legend. 

Equally natural was the order of the days* 
works. Among these poetic tent-dwellers the 
world was often figured as a larger tent, — with 
the level earth as its foundation and the domed 
sky as its roof. Isaiah (xl, 22) tells how the 
Lord "stretcheth out the heavens as a canopy, 
and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in/* 
Often the fancy was carried farther, and sun. 
moon and stars were figured as lights hung under 



12 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



the tent-roof. Isaiah tells again (xxxiv, 4) how 
the sky " shall be rolled together as a scroll," 
and the stars shall fall off like leaves from a 
vine or figs from a tree. Sometimes the sky-roof 
is made solider, and Job (xxxvii, 18) represents 
it as " strong and like molten glass." Above this 
roof were the waters which made the rain, and 
which, according to a common ancient theory, 
spread widely in space as the source of all things. 
In this upper watery realm was also the dwelling 
of God, who, according to a psalmist (Ps. civ, 
3), u layeth the beams of his chambers in the 
waters." Thence, by opening the windows of 
the sky, God sent down the rains, as in the story 
of the Hood, and the manna (Ps. lxxviii, 23), 
and "pours out a blessing" (Mai. iii, 10). The 
frequent word translated " firmament," and 
meaning something beaten out or stretched out, 
points to the same conception of a roof. Such 
expressions were probably often but poetic fig- 
ures. But with many in this and other ancient 
nations they stood for accepted facts ; and even 
so late as 535 a.d., Cosmas in his book, long so 
widely valued, described the world in detail as 
built after the plan of the Hebrew tabernacle. 
It was quite natural, therefore, for this old 



THE OLD GENESIS STORY. 



1 3 



Genesis story to regard the world as a great tent, 
and, in keeping with this thought, to mark off 
these successive steps in its creation : 

1. Amid the dark and formless waters, which 
were the original element, light was created, and 
day and night divided; — but quite independ- 
ently of the sun, which was a later and compar- 
atively unimportant addition for the mere inside 
of the dwelling. 

'l. The world-tent was pitched; the "firma- 
ment," or sky. spread out as a roof to cover the 
earth below from the watery heavens above. 

3. The chaos beneath the roof Avas drained, 
the waters gathered together in seas, and the 
thus dried floor of land was carpeted with turf 
and furnished with all vegetable life.. 

4. The abode being thus finished, sun, moon 
and stars were next made and hung beneath the 
roof, chiefly to light the inside, but also with 
movements to mark times and seasons. 

5. All being now ready, the inhabitants were 
added, — first, fish and fowl in the less important 
regions of sea and air. 

0. Lastly, the land was stocked with beasts 
and cattle, and among them man was placed as 
god-like ruler of all. 



14 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



V. The Creator rested from his finished work 
and consecrated the Sabbath. 

This story, so beautiful in its style, so poetic 
in its fancies, has yet fared hard from the hands 
of science. Geology proves that Creation was a 
longer work ; nor is there the least ground for 
the assumption that the " days " were ages, for 
the writer speaks naturally, and his repeated 
mention of evening and morning shows that he 
meant the literal day. Nor were day and night 
divided before the sun was created, as in the 
story. There is no ocean of waters above a solid 
firmament, nor any such firmament. Botany 
declares that plants could not live before the sun, 
as in the story, and astronomy proves that they 
did not. Sun and stars were not made so late to 
light the earth, but are far older than the earth 
itself. Nor were animals created so long after 
plants, but came with them. So many mistakes 
does science find here, as was to be expected. 

But science, if ruining the old story, is read- 
ing us a grander one from writing old as the 
rocks, yet fresh as the rain-drops, vast as star- 
systems, yet delicate as snowflakes. Rather, to 
the poetic thought, science is not so much ruin- 
ing the old story as enlarging it ; — replacing its 



THE OLD GENESIS STORY. 



15 



fancies by more wondrous facts, and showing us 
that its " days " did not end, and its week has 
never closed. All the work of the old legend is 
<till done before our eyes ; not once alone, as 
there, but continually repeated, and often not 
merely done, but outdone. We are learning to 
see all around us this more wonderful Genesis^ 
this Creation infinite and eternal. 

The aim of these pages is to trace this unceas^ 
ing Creation; — to show how much more mar- 
velous are the real facts than that writer's fancies ; 
how that wondrous week is still here in this 
week, and those six divine k * days " are repeated 
in every day; and how the new story, even 
better than the old one, begins a Bible and fur- 
nishes a foundation for reverence and religion. 



THE FIRMAMENT OF SPICE. 



II. 



THE FIRMAMENT OF SPACE. 

Let us first notice the field of Creation. The 
old story shows the earth as foundation of the 
universe, and domed by the solid firmament of 
the sky, in which sun, moon and stars are " set" 
to light the lands below, and by their various 
movements to mark the time for man. We 
see a more wondrous earth, floating freely in 
space, — a great globe rolling regularly on its 
axis. But the wonder widens when we look 
upward and search for this firmament set with 
stars. 

Where is that "lesser light to rule the 
night"? When two surveyors a mile apart see 
the same object in about the same direction, 
they know it is far away, and by measuring the 
difference of direction can tell just how far. But 
let the two surveyors go a thousand miles apart, 
still both see the moon in almost the same 
direction, — it is so much farther. By means of 

19 



20 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



instruments, however, they find a little differ- 
ence, and so learn that the moon is nearly a 
quarter of a million miles away, and is another 
globe two thousand miles through. 

But far higher yet are the planets. Sailing a 
thousand miles shows no change in their direction. 
Instead of sailing, let the earth's rotation for 
twelve hours carry you the whole length of its 
diameter, — still no change, except in one case. 
Mars at certain times gets near enough so that 
this movement of eight thousand miles changes 
its direction a trifle. How much? Not so 
much as taking a single step changes the direc- 
tion of a steeple two miles away ! Thence the 
distance of Mars is calculated, and its size found 
larger than that of the moon. The other planets 
are so much farther that their distance has to 
be measured in other ways. But Venus proves 
to be about as large as the earth, while four 
planets are vastly larger. Jupiter is in diameter 
ten times, and in volume a thousand times, 
greater than the earth. Some of these planets 
also have moons revolving about them, as ours 
about us. 

Yet all of these planets together are of small 
account beside the sun. This is in diameter a 



THE FIRMAMENT OF SPACE. 



21 



hundred, and in bulk a million, times greater 
than the earth, — as much as the largest pumpkin 
is larger than a pea. Instead of a mere " light 
to rule the day." it is the central mass around 
which the earth and all the planets whirl. The 
old firmament set with lights disappears, leaving 
moons rolling around earths, and earths around 
the sun, in a vast solar system. 

But higher still are the stars. This old 
writer thought them of little importance, and in 
his story of Creation gave them only two words 
in the original. But they are other suns, seem- 
ing so small only because so far away. Instead 
of letting the earth's rotation carry you, as 
before, let its semi-revolution around the sun 
move you the whole diameter of its orbit. How 
much does this vast voyage change the direction 
of the stars? The nearest of them, Alpha Cen- 
taury is so far that its direction is little more 
changed by this movement of one hundred and 
eighty million miles, than that of the steeple two 
miles away by your moving an inch. But instru- 
ments have been devised delicate enough to meas- 
ure this minute angle, and this nearest star is 
thus found to be almost twenty millions of 
millions of miles away! 



22 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



Can we conceive that distance? Take for our 
measure some journey we have made, — say from 
Chicago to Buffalo and back, a thousand miles. 
Make that long trip, and then turn the first leaf 
in your Webster's Unabridged Dictionary; 
make it again, and turn the second leaf ; again, 
and turn the third ; and so on. When you arc 
through the dictionary you have not yet trav- 
eled a million miles. Bind a hundred such dic- 
tionaries together in a volume thirty feet thick; 
yon would have to turn that through before you 
travel as far as to the sun. And how thick would 
you have to make the book to represent the dis- 
tance to that star? Thicker than from Chicago 
to Boston ! 

Yet that is only the nearest star. Two others 
are found about twice as far. Sirius is three or 
four times as far ; and, if its light is of the same 
brightness as our sunlight, must be in volume 
more than a thousand times larger than our sun. 
A few other stars can be measured with much 
uncertainty ; but nearly all are too tar away to 
be measured at all. All are plainly suns, and 
probably many arc centers of systems of planets. 
In many east's one or more of these inferior 
attendants can be seen in a large telescope as a 



minute point slowly revolving ir> n:id a brighter. 
From these we hifer counties M-r^. v :: \ ; i - 
•course we should not expect to see. 

Some live thousand c diese stars, r -un.-. -ar. 
he seen witii die naked - Bat this is almost 
nothing compared, to the v : - number seen in 
die telescope, wnioh some ::■ v estimate at - 
enty-trve millions. More stars than u. unt- 
imr one every second for ten :• i;r- Li 
could count in live 7 ears, and many proba 
attended by invisible systems. > > - the old 
worid-tent widen. 

And how much more womlrously these bodies 
awt- ^set 19 than in a solid tirmament ! F 1- rental 
to nothings they tioat like a b« 7's ailoon, — even 
more niarv 'isiy. for with no air to iloat them. 
Jtframre ships sailing o_\. *vact- - sw - 
vet with n< > sea to bear or wind to blow them 
In the presence of astronomy the ~ -uament 
is •• rolled together .is 1 s<-r- • y - r die • 
stars do not falL as the prophet saw them, like 
Leaves or Rat,:^;-. — 1 -ri7 -:r : r v .nder. — 

diey are : . rev jr :ai . . n s. 7 -t 3 n- i. . _r their safety 
in the faiL — tailing ir- und ea«-h dier in ori > 
« >t etemai order. The moon is fal i i n ir « 1 nd 
earth by the *ame iaw as the Loosen eil leaf or tfcr. 



24 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



and moving over a mile every second ; sun and 
stars are falling around other centers, and some 
moving twenty miles a second ; the earth, too, 
falling around the sun and swiftly rolling as it 
falls. Yet all move so truly that they are 
still " signs " " for seasons and for days and for 
years," and for moments, too ; - — so that by these 
golden pointers on the dial of the sky the astron- 
omer corrects his clock to the fraction of a sec- 
ond. How much more wonderful than lights 
fastened to a firmament are these living worlds, 
fastened by their very falling, and all held and 
propelled so truly as by the hand of a God ! 



WORLDS ROUNDED AND ROLLING. 



III. 



WORLDS ROUNDED AND ROLLING. 

Now, can we see how these globes were first 
formed ? As you stand in the open air, the fog- 
begins to gather around you. What- is it ? 
Watch ! Countless little specks of mist are sud- 
denly made there as if by magic, yet the specks 
all perfect spheres, — dainty worlds, — actually 
created as if from nothing, and hung on nothing, 
right there within touch of your fingers. Then 
the fog rises and floats away, and you see it is 
just like any cloud. All day long, above your 
head, the clouds are forming in the same manner, 
built up mile upon mile against the blue sky. 
As you watch these countless millions of watery 
worlds suddenly created and hung in systems 
there, when some colder breeze blows through 
the damp air, you see that here again, as in the 
old story, the creative breath or l * spirit of God 
movs upon the face of the waters." 

But how ? The professor tells you that where 

27 



28 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



you saw nothing was really invisible vapor, — 
widely scattered molecules of water,— too fine 
to be seen by eye or even microscope. But a cer- 
tain attraction lias drawn the invisible molecules 
together into larger, visible mist-specks, to make 
fog and cloud. Attraction again draws the mist- 
spheres together into larger ones, and, if these 
become large enough to overcome resistance, 
draws them to the earth in rain-drops. Through 
this force of attraction, the creative Spirit is still 
moulding, hanging and moving globes by the 
million in our own atmosphere. 

Now look beyond our atmosphere into the 
depths of space with the telescope. There, too, 
you find many hundreds of white spots, which 
the astronomers call clouds, or nebulae, as the 
word is in Latin, — of course, infinitely larger 
than ours, millions of miles in extent. These, 
too, are thought to have been drawn together by 
attraction, out of the far thinner world-vapor, 
which floats through space as water-vapor does 
through air. The spectroscope shows some are 
still in a state of vapor. The same attraction is 
still working there. In one or two cases astron- 
omers think they trace changes in these nebulae, — 
not from second to second, as in clouds, but from 



"WORLDS ROUNDED AND ROLLING 



29 



century to century. And even where the slow 
changes cannot be traced, we seem to see differ- 
ent stages in the process of attraction and con- 
densation. Some nebulae are irregular, some 
already round. Some are marked with radiating 
spirals, as if the matter were moving toward the 
center, and the movement had begotten a slow 
rotation, — just as water moving toward an-orifice 
always forms a whirlpool. Some look as if in 
the increasing rotation a portion were slowly 
detaching itself, as a drop of water flies from a 
whirling grindstone, or the grindstone itself flies 
in pieces if the rotation becomes fast enough. 
But the same attraction would keep the separat- 
ing portions from going too far, and, bending 
their paths into orbits, would make them revolve 
around the inner mass. 

By such processes still seen, the nebula would 
in time condense into a great rolling sun, with 
smaller ones rolling around it. In each of these, 
if large enough, the same process might be 
repeated, producing planets and moons. Just as, 
out of invisible water-vapor in air, attraction 
rounds the rain-drops and sends them to the 
earth ; so, out of invisible world-vapor in space, 
it seems to be rounding those drops which we call 



30 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



stars and suns, and sending them in orbits as 
systems. 

Astronomers think that our own system — 
sun, planets and moons — have come by such a 
process, extending through countless ages. This 
theory, called the " nebular hypothesis," is no 
fancy, as it may appear from our brief notice, 
but the heavens are strewn with facts in its 
support. 

From such airy and invisible substance in 
space, more wondrous than the original " waters " 
of the story, more ethereal than aught we can 
conceive; from such beginnings, "without form 
and void"; from such "darkness upon the face 
of the deep"; and through such an "evening," 
whose seconds were immeasurable eons, our 
earth was gathered into shape. 

How much grander and more religious a 
thought of Creation this brings ! For, to the 
deeper thinker, this attraction that rounds the 
worlds is only the hidden hand of God. A 
mediaeval painting shows the Creator, on the 
"fourth day," in the form and dress of a man, 
sticking sun and moon, like shining wafers, on 
a solid sky. How much more reverent is sci- 
ence's thought of a creative Spirit, unseen, yet 



WORLDS ROUNDED AXD ROLLING. 



31 



working always and everywhere, from within 
arm's reach to the farthest sight of telescope ; 
still rounding the spheres, from mist globules 
that refresh life to mighty globes that support 
it, and hanging suns and systems through the 
infinite firmament on these unseen threads of 
law! It is an infinite and eternal Creation. The 
old Bible ojDens with a beautiful text : " In the 
beginning God created the heaven and the 
earth." But the greater Genesis of this larger 
Bible opens with a far finer one : " Without 
beginning and without end, from everlasting to 
everlasting, God creates the heavens and the 
earths" 



WORLDS WARMED. 



IV. 



WORLDS WARMED. 

But while the globes were thus gathered into 
shape and systems, they were heated also. Con- 
densation always creates warmth. Pressure 
heats iron until the axle sometimes burns the 
car. Even air you can compress in a tube until 
it kindles tinder ; and the meteor rushing into 
our atmosphere is set on fire by the pressure. 
The scientists tell us that even the condensation 
of vapor into rain-drops produces heat. By the 
same principle, the infinitely vaster and longer 
condensation of world-vapor into globes, created 
that intense heat which the earth once had and 
the sun still has. 

This Creation, too, is ever continued. Not 
only is heat still made under our hammers, but 
under this same attraction of gravitation which 
moulded our sun and planets. Some astronomers 
think the sun's present supply of heat is kept 
up by meteoric masses falling from space into 

35 



36 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



his surface at the rate of some three hundred 
miles a second, as they would fall by gravity 
alone, — tremendous blows of the creative ham- 
mer heating the sun as our blows heat iron. 
More, however, think the sun's present heat is 
maintained by that same condensation and con- 
traction of his mass which has heated all the 
globes; and mathematicians tell us his diameter 
would have to contract only four miles a cen- 
tury (too little for us to see in a thousand years), 
to create all the heat he radiates. Stars, too, 
are heated by the same process, many much hot- 
ter than our sun, if we may judge by their 
brightness; and from some, though so many 
millions of millions of miles away, the heat is 
even felt by delicate instruments. 

This Creation is far too important to omit. 
The true Genesis story adds the text: " God 
said, Let there be heat," and that " it was good." 
How good ! The old heat within the earth still 
helps to keep it alive ; while the new-created 
heat of the sun turns winter into summer and 
death into life, making breezes blow and rivers 
flow, trees leaf and cattle live. Is it not a 
divine Creation? How divine should we call 
it, could we see the hand of a God building our 



WORLDS WARMED. 



37 



tires'? Yet here is a more wondrous unseen 
hand, that has rilled the earth beneath with 
heat, as a foot-stove, and built that vast hearth- 
fire of the sun around which worlds are gath- 
ered in family circle, receiving comfort, food 
and life. If the poet sees the gravitation 
which rounds the worlds divine, how much 
more so when it warms them too ! 



"LET THERE BE LIGHT." 



•LET THERE BE LIGHT. 



But with the heat had come a more wondrous 
creation — Light. Doubtless our condensing 
nebula early became dimly luminous v as others 
now are. It ever brightened with concentra- 
tion, as we may still see in the sky, until it 
became a system of glowing stars. The earth, 
for countless ages after it began to roll as a sep- 
arate globe, must have shone like a sun, — as the. 
large telescopes still show that shining planet- 
ary point revolving around the great Sirius. 
But with the earth's cooling, this so long and 
dazzling day grew dim, through a twilight 
whose minutes were millennia, and darkness 
came again. The night, however, was only in a 
shadow behind the planet; for beyond that little 
rone, the system was still everywhere filled with 
the greater light of the sun. 

This creation, also, did not end with that, 
'•first day" of the story, but ever continues. 

41 



42 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



Through even your evening lamp the creative 
Spirit still speaks the old words, " Let there be 
light"; speaks them silently through law, but 
none the less divinely. The professor, explain- 
ing little words by long ones, tells how heat 
made the carbon particles incandescent, and so 
started luminous vibrations. But why the light 
came he cannot tell. With all our science, 
every gaslight comes as mysteriously as that of 
the story, and, writing again across the darkness 
the old sentence, repeats the miracle of Creation. 

And what a miracle, when we stop to think ! 
Those carbon particles in the gas were too fine 
to see; yet they instantly made a roomful of 
light, even sent it through the solid window 
and across the city to other eyes a mile away 
before you had time to take down your hand, 
What a marvel that would be if it were seen 
but once ! And how much greater when it is 
repeated every time a match is struck ! 

Or see the Creation on a larger scale. The 
carbon particles in the greater heat of the mag- 
netic current, shine with more blinding bright- 
ness as the electric lamp, filling the square with 
light and sending it a score of miles. Or put a 
piece of common lime in the fierce heat of the 



" LET THERE BE LIGHT." 



43 



oxyhydrogen flame, and see the old miracle 
repeated exactly. This flame is simply creating 
water, yet amid the vapor " the Spirit of God 
moves upon the face of the waters," as in the 
old story, still saying "Let there be light." 
The shining lime also repeats the ages when 
the earth shone in that vast oxyhydrogen flame 
which created the oceans. 

Or see the light still created as in primal times, 
by pressure. The spark flies when the steel 
strikes the flint, or when one stone is hurled 
against another ; and above our heads, that divine 
hand of gravity, hurling the meteoric particle 
against our atmosphere, strikes a spark that 
lights a whole county fifty miles beneath. So, 
through the night, from candle beams below 
to the meteor's flashing curve above, that old 
creative line is ever written afresh across the 
darkness. 

But this night itself soon ends and Day is 
again created. The rolling earth forever slides 
from under its shadow ; the divine dawn forever 
travels around the sky, " dividing the light from 
the darkness," as in the old legend, and the sun 
rises, forever writing across some land, in golden 
letters, the old fiat, " Let there be light." 



44 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



And what a light this is ! Against the face 
of the sun even the calcium light looks like a 
black spot. For here is a mightier force than 
we can measure. The pressure of your hand on 
a match lights a little room; but the pressure of 
the creative hand of gravity on the sun lights 
our hemisphere through the vast distance,— more 
brightly, too, than a thousand candles would 
light your table. Nor do our earth and all the 
planetary worlds together receive a millionth 
part of the sun's light, but this Day blazes inces- 
santly through space in all directions, between 
the planets and far beyond them. 

This sunlight, too, is an ever fresh creation. 
That by which you read the book was made since 
you sat down. This marvelous product has been 
manufactured in the sun, shipped ninety millions 
of miles and delivered at your window, — all in 
eight minutes. 

And still the wonder grows, as science tells of 
the trains and tracks that bring the light. The 
scientists tell of its rays, more wonderful than 
any railroad ; of its w^ave-circles, more curious 
than any car-wheel ; of its unending trains, so 
swift that they would go from Chicago to Boston 
before you could wink. And not only do they 



' LET THERE BE LIGHT. 



4.5 



come straight from the sun. but are reflected 
from every object on earth in every direction : — 
the tracks crossing each other in infinite com- 
plexity, the trains forever running through each 
other. Yet there is no stop nor confusion, but 
they are ever bringing to our eyes not only the 
light, but the unbroken pictures of everything 
before us. 

For here is a still greater wonder. This light 
is an artist, too, sketching and sending in all 
directions exact portraits of everything it 
touches. Xot in mere light and shade, but in 
colors also. For each ray in the beam of light, 
each hair in the wondrous brush, carries within 
it paints of all colors, and mixes them in count- 
less hues. So the light sends its ever-changing 
paintings of cloud, sea. field, flowers and faces, 
in all directions: — even compresses them in 
microscopic miniatures within our eyes, yet so 
faithfully that we see the man across the street 
or the mountain across the state exactly as they 
are. 

Not only does the light paint these passing 
pictures in the eye. but permanent ones in the 
photograph. There the light draws your por- 
trait while the artist is picking up his pencil. 



46 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



sketches the whole street while the horse's foot 
is still poised in air, — more correctly than any 
artist, too. How patiently this light works ! 
The astronomer exposes the negative to the dim 
nebula for hours, and so lets the light slowly 
draw details which are too faint for his eye to 
see in the telescope. How swiftly it sketches ! 
He takes a photograph of the sun in the twenty- 
thousandth part of a second, and so preserves 
details too fleeting for his eye to catch. With 
such slowness or swiftness, and with such 
unspeakable delicacy can this divine artist work. 

Yet even its wonders in the photograph are 
outdone by those in the spectroscope. There 
these invisible rays, keeping their delicate lines 
through the long distance, silently tell the secrets 
of the sun's structure, the exact speed with which 
he is spinning on his axis, and the very sub- 
stances of which he is made. 

So through the day the wonders of the light 
are revealed, until the revolving earth bears us 
under the shadow of night again. Nor are they 
even then lost, but enlarged. " The darkness 
hicleth not from Thee, but the night shineth as 
the day." From moon and planets the sunlight 
is still reflected ; in the great and far-off system 



4 LET THERE BE LIGHT. 



47 



of Jupiter we watch the shadows of globe and 
satellites, and on the farther Saturn, the shadow 
of the rings : showing how through our system 
everywhere this solar light shines true. And 
beyond the planets, from stars a million times 
farther than the sun, the light now comes with 
still larger story. Borne by these wondrous 
waves, it travels a hundred thousand miles while 
you take a step, and has been so traveling, not 
for eight minutes like sunlight, but for as many 
years and often centuries. Yet in this long voy- 
age these delicate rays have not once forgotten 
their message, but write it in telescope and spee- 
troscope as faithfully as if they came but from 
across the street. — telling us of the harmony 
that holds the universe, and how, through the 
infinite depths of space, the Creator is still warm- 
ing the worlds, and still speaking from central 
suns through countless systems that majestic 
fiat, "Let then be light." 



COMPOUNDS AND CRYSTALS. 



VI. 



COMPOUNDS AND CRYSTALS. 

But meanwhile, with the closer contact of 
matter, a new form of attraction appeared, — 
chemical affinity. Gravity masses matter in 
globes, but thi> chemical attraction combines 
and unites its atoms more closely and creates 
new compounds. 

What was the original substance of the solar 
system we cannot say. It may have been what 
we call the simple elements: it may have been 
something far simpler, of which these are later 
compounds. Seeing how simple a substance is 
hydrogen, the lightest of all known gases ; see- 
ing how abundant it once was on earth, and 
how it still enwraps the sun in a coat several 
thousand miles in thickness ; and seeing how far 
more abundant the spectroscope shows it in 
stars and nebulae, some scientists think that this 
hydrogen may have been an original substance, 
out of which other elements were formed. 

51 



52 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



Some suspect that hydrogen itself has been 
formed from some more primal substance, per- 
haps like that still lighter unknown gas which 
seems to overlie it in the sun in even vaster vol- 
umes. These are, of course, only speculations. 
But, at any rate, hydrogen abounds in these 
forming worlds. In the course of creation other 
elements appear. Nitrogen is also found in 
many nebulae and stars ; while the sun con- 
tains many of our elements and several of our 
metals in gaseous form, showing us in what 
chemical condition the earth once was. 

In the cooling earth the various elements 
combined in new compounds. Especially oxy- 
gen, the most abundant element and the one 
most greedy in its attractions, united with 
nearly everything else. From such unions 
came the oxides and acids; and these, combining 
and re-combining with each other, formed the 
compounds out of which rocks were to be made. 
This oxygen also, combining with vast volumes of 
hydrogen, at length formed " the waters" of the 
story; not an original substance, but a late crea- 
tion, and not yet in the form the writer thought, 
but, like everything else, still held by the heat 
in the state of vapor. 



COMPOUNDS AND CRYSTALS. 



53 



What throes convulsed the gaseous earth in 
these chemical creations we may faintly im- 
agine. The chemist, combining the oxygen and 
hydrogen to form a few drops of water, brings 
an explosion that shakes the laboratory. In 
their union to form the water of our oceans, 
what terrific and repeated shocks shook the 
planet! Perhaps still more violent convulsions 
attended other chemical combinations. We have 
but to look at the sun to-day to see the storms that, 
from such and other causes, sweep through a 
forming world. On the sun you see spots which 
the astronomers tell you are hollows vastly 
larger than the whole earth, yet dug and leveled 
in a few days. In the storms attending these 
spots the observer sometimes sees matter shot 
a hundred thousand miles high, and at the rate 
of over a hundred miles a second; as if it should 
be thrown from Chicago to Milwaukee between 
two ticks of the clock, and with such force that 
it would keep on four times around the earth 
before stopping. Rarely do our hurricanes 
blow a hundred miles an hour. But we are 
told that storms sometimes sweep through the 
sun's chromosphere at such rate as if a hurri- 
cane should, in half a minute after crossing the 



54 



THE UXEXDING GEXESIS. 



St. Lawrence, reach the Gulf of Mexico. The 
old story perhaps referred to the wind on the 
sea, when it spoke of the spirit or breath of God 
moving " upon the face of the deep " ; but what 
mightier breath, moving on a more marvelous 
deep, do we thus see in the work of Creation! 

With further cooling, contraction and press- 
ure, vapors condensed into liquids, and the earth 
within became a seething sea of molten matter. 
Its oblate form still preserves the shape which 
its rotation gave to this fluid planet. With 
the continuation of the same process, liquids 
hardened, and the earth became solid at the 
surface from cooling, and perhaps, as many 
geologists hold, still solider at the center 
from pressure. 

But in this solidification a new form of 
attraction appeared, producing a still more curi- 
ous creation. Gravity globed matter, chemical 
affinity compounded its atoms ; but this new 
attraction arranged its molecules with wondrous 
symmetry and beauty in the Creation of crystals. 

To see this vast crystalline creation with its 
variety and beauty, we have but to look at the 
oldest rocks. We may even see it in any 
handful of sand, whose quartz gems, now of the 



COMPOUNDS AND CRYSTALS. 



55 



purest transparency and now of the most deli- 
cate hues of rose and amethyst, after rolling in 
the seas and blowing in the fields for ages, are 
still so beautiful. The laws of this old crystal- 
lization, so regular and true, the mineralogist 
may trace ; but its secret he cannot find. Let 
the scientist say what he may, the poet will ever 
see in these tessellated granites miles in depth, 
and in these marvelous mosaics of infinite pat- 
terns and tints, the work of the divine Spirit of 
Beauty paving the planet. 

All these creations are still continued. The 
elements are ever re-combining in compounds. 
In every fire we build and in every breath we 
draw, the oxygen again unites with carbon to 
create that carbonic acid which helped to make 
our limestones and marble. In every lamp you 
light, the oxygen of the air again unites with 
the hydrogen from the oil to create " the 
waters," and you may see them gather on the 
cold chimney in a film of steam. In the summer 
shower you again see vapors condense in 
liquid globes, and these often solidified in hail- 
stones. In every freezing pond you again sec 
the fluid deep crusted with the crystalline pave- 
ment. In the frost foliage of every window- 



56 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



pane, and in the snow-flakes of every winter 
storm you again see the ancient Architect 
arranging the molecules in plans of endless 
beauty. Ever and everywhere the World-Spirit 
is still at work in this Creation of compounds 
and crystals. 



SE1 MD LAND. 



VII 



SEA AND LAND. 

Above this hardening but still hot earth, the 
waters must have long been held as vapor. 
Jupiter seems to show us a world in that stage 
of creation; for astronomers think that his ever- 
changing face is a thick envelope of clouds, his 
future oceans still held aloft as steam by the hot 
planet within. In the slow cooling of the earth 
the vapors would condense and fall as rain, only 
to boil away and fall again repeatedly. So after 
ages of incessant storm we should reach that 
" face of the waters" with which the Biblical 
legend begins. 

The legend tells how, after light and the 
firmament were created, on the first half of the 
third day. " God said. Let the waters under the 
heaven be gathered together unto one place, 
and let the dry land appear." Let us notice the 
work which geology sees behind this sentence. 

The rock floor of the planet, though so thick, 

59 



60 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



was yet folded like paper by the creative hand. 
Just as ice on a settling pond is curved, cracked, 
crowded and thrust upward in ridges by its own 
weight ; so, as the earth cooled and contracted, its 
settling rocky crust was by its weight curved in 
vast valleys, cracked in great chasms, crowded 
with a force we cannot conceive, and thrust 
upward in long mountain ranges. The same 
gravity which had rounded the earth, now sunk 
basins for the seas, and lifted dry cliffs and 
continents for the shores. 

But the same force which thus raised mount- 
ains, leveled them again. The universal gravi- 
tation which globed the rain-drops and drew 
them down, also heated the sun, and thereby 
reversing the process, was ever turning the 
sea back to vapor and lifting the waters again. 
By the same force they were ever falling in rain 
and rolling seaward in rivers. Charged with 
various acids, they slowly ate and wore the 
mountains away. To learn this wearing power 
of water, read of our western canons, where 
small streams have slowly cut long channels, 
sometimes a mile deep, in solid rock. The riv- 
ers rolled and ground the fragments, and bore 
the finer ones to the sea, to spread out thick 



SEA A XI) LAXI). 



61 



strata of sandstone and clay, which the settling 
sea-beds again left dry. The sea also, beating 
in wave and tide, pounded its shores in pieces 
and strewed them in strata on its bottom. 

But fast as old mountains were leveled, new 
ones were lifted on the shriveling planet, to be 
worn down in turn. So the process continued 
tli rough incalculable ages, until the original crust 
of the earth was eaten away for many miles in 
depth, and recast in stratified rocks. With this 
process many chemical changes went on, and the 
sea was ever depositing the substances it held in 
solution, — now in stony layers, now in crystals 
such as we see sparkling in the cavities of the peb- 
bles everywhere. Most of the visible rocks are 
supposed to have been laid in the waters, though 
often changed afterward by heat. And so the 
long geological series came: — the Archaean 
rocks, which in Canada are over seven miles 
thick, and in Bohemia and Bavaria are thicker 
still ; the Palaeozoic rocks, which in our Apa- 
lachian region show another seven miles of 
thickness; and above these the rocks of the Mes- 
ozoic and Cenozoic eras, with an aggregate 
thickness of nearly as much more. So great was 



62 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



the work of that half-day, gathering the waters 
and forming the dry land. 

Nor did the process stop with flowing waters. 
In the colder epochs, even when crystallized in 
snow and hardened into ice, the waters were still 
" gathered together," as gravity slowly drew the 
glaciers downward. With what creative force ! 
These glaciers, edged with imbedded rock and 
sand, like gigantic mill-stones, ground the cliffs 
into clay, and spread out the foundations of the 
fields over a large part of the w^orld. 

So the creative hand, taking for tools these 
dainty snow-flakes aud softer rain-drops, as it 
gathered the waters to one place, crushed the 
rocks, carved the mountains and carried the chips 
along, building up broad continents of dry land, 
rich with fertile river valleys and wide plains 
and prairies. 

It was indeed " good." But the best thing 
about it is that this gathering together of 
the waters was not ended as in the story, but 
ever goes on with its ceaseless Creation. For the 
gravity that heats the sun is ever lifting the 
w r aters again in vapor to soften the air, and 
bringing them down in rain to give life to the 
earth. From the chaos of mud which each rain 



SEA AND LAND. 



63 



and snow return to the fields, the rills are ever 
running to dry the land anew, and the rivers to 
spread valleys with new soil. Having floored 
the earth for forests, they even float the timber 
downward and saw it ; having in the glaciers 
ground stones to soil to raise wheat, they still 
turn stones to grind the wheat for bread. 

So endless and divine a work do we see. In 
tlie current of every rill and river, the poet still 
reads the old sentence, " Let the dry land 
appear " : in every rain-storm and rushing stream 
he hears again the old command, " Let the waters 
be gathered together unto one place " ; — not the 
ended edict of a day, but a ceaseless song of Cre- 
ation, a hymn growing ever more sacred with the 
sounds of human life and labor. 



THE SIR FIRMAMENT. 



VIII. 



THE AIR FIRMAMENT. 

After the elements were thus compounded and 
crystallized, the land laid and the waters gathered 
in seas, there remained a volume of nitrogen and 
other gases wrapping the earth with an atmos- 
phere. We have seen how much the Biblical 
legend makes of " the firmament," or earth-roof, 
holding up the waters above, and set with sun 
and stars beneath. We have seen the roof van- 
ish in infinite space and its lamps become worlds. 
But this thin film of atmosphere below it is in so 
many ways a sort of roof, that Ave will follow out 
the old fancy and ^peak of the firmament of air. 

This air seems a nothing ; Ave hardly feel it 
and cannot see it. Yet it is as real as any roof. 
The professor weighs it ; when it moves it 
pushes ships ; in tornadoes it crushes the stout- 
est roots man can make. And even far above 
the earth, where it is many times thinner, it still, 
like a protecting roof, checks and almost stops 

G7 



68 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



the meteors that strike it, and is hard enough to 
set them on fire by the blow in a fraction of a 
second. 

It does hold up the waters more wondrously 
than the writer thought. Too thin to see, they 
are everywhere in it. They are even in the air 
in your room, and you have but to bring in a 
cold stone to see them gather on it in a thin film 
thickening into drops. So the earth, a larger 
stone, gathers them out of the clear air every 
night in dew. Dr. Dalton estimated that in 
England dew enough falls every year to make a 
coat of water five inches thick. The airy roof 
is always holding up floods of water in this gas- 
eous and ghostly form. Its invisible currents 
sweep along the roof, carried across the conti- 
nent swifter than by the cars, on unseen tracks 
built of air and ballasted with wind. 

The waters are also there in visible form. 
Watch the cisterns of the clouds, whose walls 
are only fluid and foundations only gas, yet float- 
ing in the breeze or tumbling in the tempest 
without spilling a drop. This air holds them up 
as really as the story's fancied roof. Without it 
these dainty mist-spheres would fall to the earth, 
sometimes half a mile in a second. They do 



THE AIR FIRMAMENT. 



69 



ever tend to fall, but the air resists them much 
or little according to their smallness. A water- 
drop one-thousandth of an inch in diameter could 
fall only two inches in a second in still air. 
But generally the air is not still, and often 
rising more than that, so that the drops have 
to become much larger before they fall at all. 
Even drops one-fourth of an inch through 
could fall in it only about thirty-four feet in a 
second. The air really holds up the cloud reser- 
voirs like a roof, checks the rain-drops and holds 
back the hail-stones, which would, without it, 
kill us like bullets. 

But the atmosphere is a roof in other ways. 
Though so clear that its fifty miles and more of 
thickness seem to hide nothing, it yet shades 
from the sun by day, and gives us the beauty of 
the dawn and evening. Without it, sunlight 
would be blinding glare, every shadow black- 
ness, and day pass at once into night. But by 
refraction and reflection this air diffuses the light 
like ground glass, and hanging over the earth like 
a sun-shade, turns the dazzling brightness into 
the soft splendor of the day, and extends the day 
in the twilight. It even decomposes the light, 
spreading the sunset colors over the sky-ceiling, 



70 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



and paints the cloud-cisterns as frieze and ever- 
shifting decoration, glorious with purple and 
gold, like a cathedral roof. 

And how much better than any cathedral roof 
does it gather the sound and send music to our 
ears! Take the air out of the church and the 
singing would he silent. The roof aids, but the 
air makes the sound. Without this atmospheric 
roof, the roar of the sea, the music of birds and 
voices of friends would be stilled, and the earth 
become dumb. 

The air is indeed a roof, shading for our work 
and adorned for our worship ; — a temple dome 
covering all the earth, resounding all the day 
with the sacred music of life, and forever fres- 
coed afresh by the hand of the Creator for the 
matin and vesper service. 

The atmosphere also brings us a temperate 
warmth. Like a roof, it moderates the sun's 
mid-day heat ; like a roof, it retains the day's 
heat and warms by night. We have but to go 
up a mountain or in a balloon, partly out of the 
air, to find, by freezing, how it warmed us. Like 
a great blanket, it cosily wraps the earth about. 
Without this air-covering to moderate extremes, 



THE AIR FIRMAMENT. 



71 



our ponds would well nigh boil at noon, and 
would freeze every summer night. 

But the air-roof warms still more wondrously 
than by retaining the sun's heat, — it makes our 
artificial heat. Without air. every lire would 
instantly go out, and none could be built again. 
We speak of wood and coal as our fuel, but even 
more truly air is the fuel, and we are burning it 
all the time. We open the draft to get more air 
into the stove. We add the chimney to lamp, 
house and factory to send air in swifter current 
to the fire. The blacksmith blows the bellows 
with his arm, and the blast furnace blows them 
with engines of a thousand horse-power, only to 
faster feed the fire with air. This air seems the 
real fuel which warms our houses and works our 
factories. 

It warms and works in our bodies in the same 
way. Breathing is only a burning, the doctors 
say, producing warmth and force within, just as 
fire without. Lungs are bellows to keep up the 
draft. Breath is ever burning us. Give us air, 
and we keep warm and work. Shut off the air, 
and we grow cold and go out like any fire. 

Even our literal fuel has come from the air, — 
is the leavings from the building and the refuse 



72 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



from the repairs of the old roof. The original 
atmosphere was a bad roof for animal life. It 
was full of deadly carbonic acid, in which fires 
could not burn nor creatures breathe. But the 
great growth of plants, especially in the carbon- 
iferous age, slowly absorbed this acid, and, 
decomposing it, packed away its carbon in our 
coal beds. 

The same process not only thus purified the 
air and stored up fuel, but gave us this fire to 
burn it. For the other element of the decom- 
posed carbonic acid, — the oxygen, which the 
trees gave out again, — was the part of our air 
which does the work. The oxygen alone, by its 
greedy affinities, would make too fierce a fire ; — 
the chemist shows it to us, kindling again a 
blown-out candle, and in the flame burning steel 
wire like string. But, mixing with that old 
atmosphere of nitrogen, which was four times 
its amount, it was diluted to its present strength 
in our air. 

So curiously has the air-roof been built, — 
repaired through long ages, its refuse saved for 
fuel, and its strength, like any raftered roof or 
canvas-tent, gathered from the vegetable world. 
And how much finer its structure than any tent- 



THE AIR FIRMAMENT. 



73 



cloth ! Through the dull warp of nitrogen is 
woven everywhere this wondrous woof of oxy- 
gen ; — both unseen, yet without whose covering 
no fire nor man could live an instant. Not only 
a roof which warms by its shelter, but which is 
ever burning to make heat and life within. 

This creation also still continues. The waters 
are ever being lifted " above the firmament." 
With what power ! One tells us that to raise 
back to vapor in the upper air a rain which cov- 
ers the United States only one-tenth of an inch, 
requires more power than all the steam-engines 
in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago could 
produce, running day and night, for a century. 
Nor is this water merely lifted, but purified, fil- 
tered, literally distilled, and as it were created 
anew. 

The roof itself is forever rebuilding. Our 
fires and breathing are constantly burning it, — 
>till worse, are ever making that deadly acid. 
But the trees are steadily working as creative 
arms, repairing the damage. Their busy fin- 
gers cunningly pick the unseen poison from the 
air. Still more cunningly they divide each par- 
ticle that slays into two that save, giving us 
carbon for fuel and food, and oxygen for fire and 



74 



THE UNENDING GENESIS.- 



breath ; making timber for our little roofs, and 
repairing this earth-roof that shelters all. Ever, 
as on that " second day," the World-Spirit is 
spreading the wondrous firmament, — shade and 
screen by day, warming cover through the night, 
and celestial fire to heat our homes in winter and 
our bodies with life. 



PLANT CREATION. 



IX 



PLANT CREATION. 

We have now noticed some of the eliief pro- 
cesses in the inorganic Genesis: — a world gath- 
ered, globed, warmed, lighted, compounded, 
walled with crystal, floored with strata, worn 
and washed with waters, and roofed with air. 
But meanwhile, in the gathering seas and ground 
slime, there had come a higher organic creation, 
of more complex composition than any previous 
compound, of more curious structure than any 
crystal. The new organisms were built of, and 
apparently began with, those strange units. 
living cells. These cell-spheres, minuter than 
mist-specks, were yet more marvelous than suns, 
having power to live and grow, to divide and 
reproduce themselves. Cells were the new 
atoms, to be combined in a higher chemistry: 
the new molecules, to he crystallized into the 
infinite variety of vegetable and animal forms; 



78 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



the new worlds, whence was to spring a higher 
spiritual life. 

The lowest living forms are single cells, so 
simple that they can hardly be called either 
vegetable or animal, and have been classed 
sometimes as one, sometimes as the other. Many 
suppose that life began in this low and general 
form, from which the vegetable and animal 
kingdoms afterward divided. Geologists judge 
from beds of iron ore and graphite in the rocks 
of the Archaean era, that vegetable life was then 
already abundant, though in forms too minute 
to be preserved. 

But through the Palceozoic era plants greatly 
advanced in size, variety and structure, and their 
remains abound in the rocks. In its Silurian 
period we find algae, representing that marine 
vegetation which the Biblical story does not 
notice, but which was flourishing so long before 
land-life appears. In its Devonian period land- 
plants came, with root and stem, and clothed at 
last in fronds or leaves, making the acrogens. 
In its Carboniferous period these acrogens rose 
into tree-like forms, and thickened into dense for- 
ests and swamps of club-mosses, equisetae and 



PLANT CREATION. 



79 



ferns, which continued to flourish through its 
closing Permian period. 

In those forests, fronds or leaves were the 
leading features. These graceful forms, with 
their wondrous structure, took in through 
countless cunning mouths their invisible carbon 
food, packing it away in huge trunks which sup- 
ply the most of our coal, and purifying the air 
in the process. 

But through the following Mesozoic era, we 
trace a growing care for that still more im- 
portant organ, the seed. The acrogens and 
lower forms had multiplied chiefly by scattered 
spores, — simple cells, — or by mere cell-division. 
But already there had begun to grow a higher 
order of cone-bearing trees with seeds. Such 
pine-like conifers, together with palm-like cvcads, 
became the leading vegetable forms in the Tri- 
assic and Jurassic periods of the Mesozoic era. 
Both these orders were gymnosperms, — that is 
with seeds naked as in our pine-cones. But now 
the seeds began to be covered with more care. 
Now came at length the grass, with which the 
Biblical plant-creation begins. Now came the 
higher class called angiosperms, — that is with 
covered seeds. The Cretaceous period, which 



80 



THE UNENDING GENESIS 



closed the era, saw willows, poplars, oaks, hick- 
ories, beeches and maples. Then, too, appeared 
still higher forms of herb and fruit tree with 
petaled flowers. 

This Flower should not be passed over in our 
sketch of creation, for it is the symbol of a new 
and higher form of attraction, that between 
sexes. The separation of two sexes appeared 
early among plants, and we see them and their 
union even among the algse. In this way come 
the higher forms of spores, and in this way come 
all seeds, from the pollen-dusted pine to the flow- 
ering maple. But it is in the petaled flowers 
that this attraction assumes its highest beauty. 
Here is a genuine marriage, with prophecy of 
the higher family and home. Perhaps the 
wedded pair are strangers, introduced from 
afar by match-making breeze or bee ; perhaps 
they have grown up as neighbors and relatives. 
But it is a literal marriage. The stem is deco- 
rated as for a wedding ; the leaves come in softer 
raiment as guests and witnesses ; the petals in 
radiant white or rosy blushes circle around as 
bridesmaids ; the wedding-table is set forth with 
nectar and honey, and sheds its perfume on all 
sides ; while, with a literal warmth, symbolic of 



PLANT CREATION. 



81 



love, the bridal stigma receives the stamen's 
greeting, and the marriage is complete. The 
infant seeds are long nursed in the pistil's bosom, 
or rocked in the calyx cradle ; until, ripe for a 
new life, and perhaps enriched with fruity lay- 
ers or equipped with feathery wings, they are 
borne by beast, bird or breeze to spread the 
species elsewhere. 

This perfecting and painting of flower and 
fruit, through the agency of insects and various 
animals, continued through the Cenozoic era and 
since. And so we reach the variety, beauty and 
value of the vegetable world to-day. 

What a Creation it was ! That half-day which 
the legend gives to the work lengthens into ages 
past our power to number. Most of the species 
and genera have perished by natural decay and 
the wear of the waters. Yet the few fragments 
that have been pressed and preserved, fill an 
herbarium whose leaves are rock-strata, whose 
wrinkles are mountain chains, and whose volumes 
are sometimes piled miles deep beneath our feet. 
And, looking through its stony sheets, we get 
glimpses here and there of the infinite patience 
and variety of this creation, Avhich from Silurian 
algae and simpler cells has risen to our forests 



82 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



of stout oak and graceful elm, or to our orchards 
blushing with blossoms and golden and crimson 
with fruit. 

And how was the work wrought ? Was each 
species shaped in an independent creation, as 
used to be supposed, or were all parts of one 
process ? The latter, say the scientists. Geol- 
ogists seeing how past species have slowly 
appeared with gradual change of form, and 
botanists seeing how present species merge into 
or shade toward each other, and how forms are 
still changing, agree that this varied creation is 
all one. They agree, also, that this, like all other 
creations, was natural, through laws inherent in 
the earth. To the old verse, " Let the earth bring 
forth," science responds with the next verse, 
" The earth brought forth." It says the creation 
was orderly, one species rising from another, and 
all through law, in that gradual growth called 
evolution. Nor can we deny it, since throughout 
the plant-world to-day we see the process of evo- 
lution, and no other. 

For this Creation also is ever continued. 
Notice how the waters of a summer shower, 
again " gathered together into one place," in the 
little sea of a hoof-hole in the street, are in a 



PLANT CREATIOX. 



83 



few hours swarming with vegetable life. Put a 
drop under the microscope and see the simple 
swimming cells so minute. Here under our eyes 
they have sprung from the invisible, like the life 
of old Laurentian seas. Or examine the scum 
that seems so foul on a stagnant pool, and see 
similar cells divide and lengthen into long- 
threads of algae, each so beautifully marked with 
regular spots and spirals. Here are the cre- 
ative wonders of the long Silurian age, condensed 
in a day in the road-side ditch. 

From similar cells come the great algae of our 
oceans, longer than any tree-trunk. From simi- 
lar cells still come our mosses, equisetae and 
ferns, as they came in the Carboniferous age. 
A similar cell still grows into a pine-nut and a 
pine, as in the Permian, or into an acorn and an 
oak. as in the Cretaceous period. All vegetable 
forms, from a mushroom to a magnolia, from a 
mould speck in cheese to a giant Sequoia in Cali- 
fornia, come from single cells so similar that 
they can hardly be told apart. All now, as of 
old, come by natural growth, by evolution; but 
are not the less creations of that mysterious 
organizing presence and power called God. 

Every spring, from fields so lately frozen hard 



84 THE UNENDING GENESIS. 

as primitive rock, the Spirit of Life again, as on 
that "third day," calls forth the grass, and 
through every summer " the herb yielding seed." 
Through the winter beneath the snow, and 
through centuries beneath the soil, these won- 
drous seeds are safely held in the Divine Hand 
waiting their resurrection. The old order, 
" Let the earth bring forth," is still spoken in 
every drop of water and grain of dust, is still 
obeyed in every tree of the forest and blade of 
the field. 



1NIM1L CREATION. 



X. 



ANIMAL CREATION. 

With the plant creation had come a greater, 
that of animals. These also were composed of 
cells very similar to those of plants. They are 
supposed to have begun Avith single-celled forms, 
gradually enlarging, but remaining with simple 
structure during the Archaean era. 

But through the Palceozoic era animals came 
with growing abundance and great advance in 
structure. Before the close of its long Silurian 
period, whose fossils already show over ten 
thousand species, the four general divisions had 
appeared. There we see radiates, represented 
chiefly by corals and beautiful crinoids; mol- 
lusks, in rich abundance and variety of shells, 
culminating in those great cephalopods some- 
times fifteen feet in length, which were the 
rulers of those seas; articulates, principally in 
the crustacean form of trilobites, of which over 
fifteen hundred species are found; and last, just 

87 



88 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



before the end of the period, vertebrates, in a 
low form of fishes. During the Devonian 
period, articulates rose into the higher form of 
air-breathing insects; while the vertebrate fishes 
multiplied into many species and became char- 
acteristic of the age. In the Carboniferous 
period, vertebrates appeared with the higher 
structure of amphibians, breathing partly by 
gills in water and partly by lungs in air. While 
in the Permian period they rose into the higher 
form of true reptiles, breathing altogether by 
lungs. 

For breathing is the first function separating 
animals from plants, and the improvement of 
organs for it, is the foremost principle in animal 
progress. Both plant and animal take carbon for 
food, but the animai besides takes oxygen for 
fire. Both eat for growth, but the animal also 
breathes to burn its food and fibre, and so gets 
something better than growth. The tree grows 
as long as it lives, but pays for it by standing 
still ; the animal soon ceases to grow, but, turn- 
ing its food into force, moves and works. Even 
the lower animals of the seas breathe air, which is 
always mixed with the water ; and to the leaves of 
plants correspond their curious gills of so many 



ANIMAL CREATION. 



89 



forms for it. But in the rising scale, gills give 
place to organs for using more air. So, while 
the leaves of the carboniferous forests were puri- 
fying the air, animals were assuming these 
higher leaves, — lungs, — to breathe it. 

But those Permian lungs were still of a low 
order, and through the Mesozoic era we trace the 
growth of better ones, and the attending progress 
in force and form. The animal fire, in lung 
furnace blown by chest-bellows, burned more 
freely, producing heat ; and the cold blood of 
fish and reptile grew warm in quadruped and 
bird. From the fire also came more force, and 
better organs for using it. To fins for swim- 
ming and poor feet for crawling, succeeded 
longer limbs for walking and wings for flight. 
In this era came those great Hying reptiles with 
webbed wings. Midway in it appeared that 
curious connecting link whose relics have been 
found, — retaining the teeth and tail of a reptile, 
but having the long tail and wings feathered 
like a bird. In rocks a little later, have been 
found remains of truer birds, but still keeping 
the reptile's long and toothed jaws. Before the 
close of the era genuine birds appeared. The 
fire was bringing force 1 and lifting the sluggish 



00 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



reptile toward the swift frigate-bird, which, as 
Michelet says, " takes his breakfast on the Sen- 
egal and dines in America." 

And with wings were coming organs for a 
higher flight than through the air. The nervous 
system, which had been present and progressing 
from the lowest forms, was becoming ever more 
complex and concentrated in brain. Far-reach- 
ing powers of sense were coming, in the acuter 
hearing of beasts and the sweeping sight of 
birds. Even the mental power of memory and 
combination was dawning. In the higher ani- 
mals of the Mesozoic times, mind was already 
prophesied, — perhaps it were truer to say, mind 
was already present. 

In this era there also came an important 
change containing even a moved element. Mam- 
mals appeared, with that closer relation to the 
young, which is the foundation of the family. 
While the plant-seed was being covered as we 
saw, the animal egg, corresponding to it was 
receiving even more care. Eggs, among fishes 
and many reptiles, were abandoned, like seeds, 
to shift for themselves. Some animals, how- 
ever, with a care not seen in the vegetable 
world, guarded the eggs and offspring ; and 



ANIMAL CREATION. 



91 



birds even warmed the eggs to life, and watched 
the young with parental fondness. But in the 
mammal, the egg was hatched within, and the 
young nursed upon the maternal body. Hence 
came a still closer bond, and a new form of 
attraction. Plants and most animals showed no 
higher attraction than that between the sexes : 
but in mammals came this closer union of 
parent and child, — binding not only the sexes, 
but the generations. That same Mesozoic era 
which perfected the vegetable flower, thus laid 
the foundations of that higher animal-flower, 
the family. Seeing how influential this new 
relation became, in the growth of regard and 
affection, it is hardly too much to say that with 
the mammal morality was born. 

Through the Cenozoic era, mammals were the 
rising and ruling order. At length, with form 
grown erect and noble, with limbs perfected in 
firm feet and cunning fingers, with nervous sys- 
tem grown and gathered in wondrous brain, 
they culminated in Man. 

So vast was this Creation of animals. It lasted 
through numberless ages. It included not merely 
a few species to be gathered in a garden or shut 
in an ark, but how many? Over 300,000 living 



92 



THE UNENDING GENESIS, 



species have already been described; and Mr. 
Lubbock, in a late address, estimates as many 
more yet undescribed, and that the extinct 
species would swell the number to above two 
millions ! It reached through infinite forms 
from amoeba to man. 

And how was the work wrought, — by special 
and independent creations, or by one connected 
and continued creation through natural law? 
The latter, again say the scientists. Geologists 
seeing the gradual rise of past forms, zoologists 
seeing the continued variations of present forms, 
and embryologists seeing how each form still 
goes through the long rise, agree that animals, 
like plants, have been created, one species from 
another, through the orderly process of evolu- 
tion. 

The conclusion is confirmed as we see this 
Creation also ever going on. In that hoof -hole 
in the street, the animal, too, still comes from the 
unseen as in the Archaean seas. You may see 
the millions of years of the old mollusk creation 
repeated in every snail, as he is shaped from a 
single cell, and has his wondrous house of shell 
arched over him. Or would you see those curi- 
ous trilobites created? Here in the April pool, 



ANIMAL CREATION. 



98 



still swimming on his back, is their nearest liv- 
ing relative, — the more beautiful branchipus. 
This fairy form, so brilliant with blue and red, 
with his wondrous gilled fins waving in so grace- 
ful rhythm, has been created in a few weeks 
from a speck of dust baked in the clay or blown 
in the wind, — and that in turn came from 
another of those cells. From similar cells the 
vertebrate fishes are still built up, and you may 
see much of the process in any hatchery. That 
long creation of the Silurian seas is repeated 
every summer. 

Or watch that old reptilian creation in any 
ditch, as the little black specks are built up into 
gilled tadpoles for the water, and these again 
into lunged frogs for the land. We laughed at 
the evolutionists when they first told us that 
reptiles had grown from fish in a few million 
years; yet every frog shows us the miracle con- 
densed into a few weeks. We denounced their 
folly when they said flying forms had grown 
from creeping ones ; yet every bee or butterfly 
repeats the change, and every bird still rises from 
a marine form in the egg, and from a single cell 
behind it. So every mammal, and man, rises 
through these earlier stages, and springs origi- 



94 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



nally from that same old cradle — the cell. 
Man is still created, — not merely two in one day, 
as in the story, but fifty thousand every day. 
All these forms come by growth, by evolution, 
but not the less by Creation that we may well 
call Divine. 

How much Diviner than in the old thought! 
Mediaeval pictures show a visible God shaping a 
few animals, and then clumsily building man 
from clay and woman from a rib. How much 
more reverent is science's story of an Infinite 
Spirit of Life, silently moulding and marshal- 
ing these dainty cells by the firm but unseen 
hand of Law; with Divine constancy holding 
each form to its type, and with as Divine change 
adapting each type to its conditions; so filling 
the ages with these myriads of species; nor ever 
resting with work " finished " and " ended," as 
in the legend; through every sea and stream 
still speaking the old command, " Let the waters 
bring forth abundantly"; through every field 
still forming "cattle and creeping thing"; and 
ever, as on that " sixth day," crowning the work 
with the Creation of Man! 



THE MENTAL DOMINION. 



XI. 



THE MENTAL DOMINION. 

We have thus followed Creation upward to the 
human body, but it reaches far higher in the 
miracle of mind. The old story, exalting man, 
pronounces him made " in the image of God," to 
" have dominion over " all things. Let us notice 
a few steps in his growing dominion. 

Immediately following the Creation legend in 
the Bible, is another of different origin and tone, 
picturing the condition of the first human pair. 
According to this they were by no means such 
noble creatures as theology asserts, but were little 
better than animals. They were naked in body, 
as naked in mind, with no taste yet of " the tree 
of knowledge," so that the only thing we hear 
of them doing with this pleasant Eden is — to 
lose it. Unmoral, too, with "no knowledge of 
good and evil," they were mere creatures of 
appetite, eating and falling, the man then meanly 
blaming the woman. Their religion was only 

97 



98 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



fear, — trying to hide " amongst the trees " from 
a weak God who " walked in the cool of the day," 
and who was outwitted by a serpent, and cursed 
his creation. Poor savages they remain to the 
last, — their highest products, so far as the story 
tells, " aprons of fig-leaves " ; their first-born son 
a murderer ; their race for long centuries given _ 
to violence, and so worthless and wicked that 
the Lord " repented that he had made man," and 
at length sent a flood to destroy them. 

Primitive men were doubtless quite as low as 
this ; — perhaps rising in tropical Edens, along 
those fertile river valleys, among abundant trees 
"pleasant to the sight and good for food" ; but 
low savages, naked or clad in leaves as Schwein- 
furth saw them in Africa, thinking toil an 
evil and most ground cursed, of mere animal 
appetites, brutal and ignorant, their religion only 
fear of gods as fickle as themselves. Long they 
remained in this low Eden, plucking spontaneous 
fruits, and with the mere hunter's " dominion " 
over fish, fowl and beast, which they but 
" named " and slew for food. 

But learning to eat from "the tree of knowl- 
edge," not once alone, but daily, and with ever- 
increasing appetite, they lost indeed this lazy 



THE MENTAL DOMINION. 



99 



Eden of animal content, and went forth to toil 
and trouble, yet not to fall, but to rise to ever 
higher rank. They learned not merely to master 
all things, but even to create for themselves, and 
thus show still more clearly the image of the 
Creator. 

We have space to say but little of these mental 
achievements. Let us, however, turning back- 
ward through the creations we have noticed, see 
how Man has learned not only to use, but to 
imitate them. 

First, he wrought with the animal creation, 
and, advancing from the hunting to the pastoral 
stage, learned not to kill, but to keep these crea- 
tures for readier food and varied service. He 
tamed flocks to feed and clothe him, and the wolf 
to watch them ; he caught the camel to bear his 
burdens, the wild horse to double his speed, and 
the bird to carry his messages still swifter. 
Usurping the creative power, he again bade these 
creatures " be fruitful and multiply,'' and made 
them do it faster. Over seas and streams, too, 
he to-day repeats the old fiat, " Let the waters 
bring forth abundantly," and makes useless lakes 
and ponds fill with fish for him. And he not 
only thus increases the old animals, but shapes 



100 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



new forms, making cattle larger, steeds swifter, 
and birds more beautiful, — creates new varieties 
at pleasure, and will create new species and gen- 
era if you give him time. 

Then Man came to the vegetable creation, and 
advancing from the pastoral to the agricultural 
stage, learned not merely to pluck, but to plant 
seeds and fruits, to till the ground and find under 
its fancied curse a blessing. Over stony hill- 
sides and dry deserts he again spoke the 
creative word, " Let the earth bring forth grass, 
the herb yielding seed and the fruit-tree yielding 
fruit ; and it was so." Man created new forms 
here, too ; turned the wild grasses into richer 
grains, and the cursed " thorns and thistles " of 
the legend into brighter flowers to adorn his 
gardens and bending trees to enrich his orchards. 
Instead of losing a little Eden, he was learning 
to turn the wide world into Eden. 

Meanwhile he repeated the previous creation, 
and beneath that firmament roof of air built a 
more sheltering roof for his hut and home. He 
also learned to turn this air into fire without him, 
as nature did within ; and adding to the heat in 
his body a warmer one on his hearth, he could 
defy wind and winter. Even the poisonous car- 



THE MENTAL DOMINION. 



101 



bonic acid from the fire within and without, he 
learned to utilize, and letting it combine with 
lime again, as in old geologic days, he made it 
harden his mortar and create new strata of mar- 
ble to line his home with warmer walls. That 
fire which he first perhaps borrowed from volcano 
or lightning, he learned to make at will. The 
old creation of fire, we saw, was by ages of 
pressure on a sun ; but man learned to get it 
more promptly by pressure on struck flint or 
rubbed stick, and at length on a bit of phosphorus. 
No wonder the savage thought our familiar 
match, by which man could carry the lightning 
and volcano in his pocket, to flash and flow at 
command, " the greatest miracle since creation." 
Man also carried the fire from his home into the 
arts, and adding higher chimney and strong- 
bellows made it burn fiercer in forge and furnace. 
So he dissolved the rocks and melted the metals 
again, and rose from the Eden age of stone 
through successive ages of bronze and iron and 
steel. 

Also over that creation of the waters, as they 
were ever "gathered together unto one place," 
Man asserted his "dominion," and made the 
rivers carry his raits, and the streams work for 



102 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



him, grinding, sawing, weaving. So, instead of 
old tents, came boarded and beautiful homes; 
instead of ancient women wearily turning stones 
all day to mash a little meal for the family, 
came great flouring mills to feed foreign states; 
and instead of Eden's fig-leaves, came factories 
making fine cloths by the mile. Not only the ^ 
waters, while "gathered together," but while 
scattering again, Man made to work for him; and 
creating to order those airy " waters above the 
firmament," he harnessed them in his steam- 
engines to drive machinery, to draw cars across 
the continents and ships over the seas, to carry 
crops and comforts everywhere. 

Man reached still further back in the creative 
processes, and learned the laws of crystals and 
compounds. Out of old sand heaps he made 
glass in larger and clearer plates than the origi- 
nal quartz. In his chemistry he learned to dis- 
solve the compounds to their elements again, 
and to combine them anew. Through these 
chemical creations he learned new dominion 
over his own body, how to throw men any time 
into as deep a sleep as Adam's in the story, and 
to painlessly remove more important bones than 
ribs, and make about as good to take their place. 



THE MENTAL DOMINION. 



103 



He learned in his medicine to heal and save, to 
"put forth his hand and take also of the tree of 
life," and lengthen his years below. 

Better yet, Man learned to make each year 
longer, and life larger, with ever growing knowl- 
edge and power. See, for instance, what he 
has done with that earlier creation, light. With 
that glass he brought it through solid walls to 
flood his house. Out of the glass he made cun- 
ning lenses to increase the light. So, with 
spectacles, he saved and strengthened his eyes 
when they failed. He even created, as it were, 
new eyes; — telescopes to see a thousand times 
further, and microscopes to see ten thousand 
times finer, so bringing within his vision, above 
and below, infinite worlds of wonder. He made 
a prism as a plaything, and then turned the play- 
thing into a spectroscope, which showed sub- 
stances far finer than the microscope could, and, 
reaching beyond the telescope, brought down the 
stars to tell him of what they were made. So he 
has gone on, enslaving this light to all sorts of 
service, from bleaching his linen to painting his 
pictures. He creates the light also, — ever 
brighter and cheaper. He has laid his hand 
even on the fitful lightning, in which savage 



104 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



and psalmist saw an angry God, and learning 
not only to manage it, but to make it for him- 
self, he sets it up as a steady lamp to supplement 
the sun. So Man, too, creates day out of darkness, 
and everywhere repeats the old command, " Let 
there be light." 

At that earlier creation of globing planets and 
making solar systems, Man has not tried his 
hand. But he shows powers greater than grav- 
ity. And when we see how he has asserted his 
"dominion" over the earth, and, reaching through 
the skies, has weighed the solar system and read 
its secrets; it is quite allowable to say that this 
little globe on his own shoulders outbalances the 
sun and outshines the stars. 

So great is the mental Creation. And this 
continues, too. Not only is the miracle of a 
minute cell growing so soon to this dominion 
over earth and space so often repeated, but the 
dominion is ever reaching higher Much, if 
not most of it, has been gained this century, and 
the further it extends the faster it widens. 
Man's mental capacity and power seem infinite; 
and more clearly every year does he prove him- 
self created " in the image of God." 



MORAL AND SPIRITUAL CREATIONS. 



XII. 



MORAL AND SPIRITUAL CREATIONS. 

A few lines must be given to higher, though 
less tangible, creations. Wnile Man has been 
gaining this mental dominion over nature, he 
has gained a more noble moral dominion over 
himself. While domesticating wild animals, he 
tamed the beast within him ; while tilling the 
soil, he turned his own thorny and thistly 
passions into flower and fruit ; while learn- 
ing and mastering nature's laws, his own life 
grew loyal and orderly ; and while building 
the home, he was founding humanity. 

With the home, society began. The family, 
which we saw dimly prophesied in the flower 
and more clearly in the mammal, came with 
man. Here the sexes were joined in better 
marriage, and the offspring reared with longer 
and tenderer care. The family became a new 
cell, for the creation of higher social structures. 
Families united in tribes, tribes in states, states 

107 



108 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



in nations, with increasing size and more com- 
plex organization. 

With this social growth, justice increased. 
In the smallest combinations of men, mutual 
rights are learned, and the " commandments " 
aie revealed, written more deeply than on stone 
tables. In the little circle, necessity itself pro- 
claims " Thou shalt not " wrong each other, — 
though to wrong all outside is still considered 
light. But with the widening combinations of 
tribes, justice, from this small beginning, ex- 
tends and deepens in national laws and inter- 
national equity. 

In the same social growth, mercy also enlarges. 
That tenderness which we saw taught at the 
mammal's breast extends in the human family 
not only to children, but to children's children, 
and widens to remoter relatives. In its spread 
it binds the tribe in mutual sympathy, and the 
nation with kindlier feelings ; it ripens at last 
in humaner sentiments, and bears fruit in gen- 
erous charities, which know no distinctions of 
nation or race. 

The useful are also crowned with finer arts. 
Beauty, taught in nature's forms and hues, and 
in the animal tastes that profit by them, re- 



MORAL AND SPIRITUAL CREATIONS. 



109 



ceives ever higher regard. The foul hut grows 
to the tasteful home, and the rude clay idol to 
sculptured decorations. Out of very butchery 
rises beauty. The war paint comes to color 
rich pictures : and the savage bow, adding 
string to string, literally grows into the harp 
and the piano. 

Literature comes with still more beautiful 
creations. Language, like a larger nervous 
system of society, communicates the various ex- 
periences from member to member and from gen- 
eration to generation. Libraries, like a longer- 
lived brain, accumulate knowledge, thoughts 
and feelings, and keep them more safely than 
memory, from age to age. So literature, rising 
from tierce war songs and legends, comes to 
Weave truths in ideal creations, which preserve 
the noblest sentiments and hopes, and inspire 
still nobler ones. 

Religion also rises ever higher. Beginning 
in bloody sacrifices to feed and appease angry 
gods, it grows to see its ideal in a humane 
Buddha or Jesus, who taught universal mercy, 
and to find its true sacrifice and service in acts 
of self-denial for others. The sentiment of 
worship grows, too. Beginning in fear of a 



110 



THE UNENDING GENESIS. 



weak God "walking in the garden," it rises 
into reverence of a Spiritual Presence, unseen 
indeed, but ever " amongst the trees " and every- 
where, walking in paths of Law, — but not the 
less in paths of Love. For this creation we 
have traced, wrought ever through Attraction; — 
wedding matter in suns and suns in systems; 
wedding atoms in molecules, molecules in crys- 
tals and cells, and cells in living creatures; 
wedding sexes in flowers and families, and 
families in tribes and nations ; wedding hus- 
band and wife, parent and child, friend 
and friend, in links of love which outlive 
the grave, and which are ever lengthening to 
bind mankind in peace and brotherhood; — this 
creation shows a profounder meaning in the old 
truth that "God is Love." This All-Father, 
ever enfolding His offspring more closely, — 
from matter warmed in suns, and animals 
warmed with life, to the human mother warmed 
with love, — though too great to show favor or 
fondness, seems yet to speak with a wiser than 
maternal tenderness: " Can a woman forget her 
nursing child? Yea, they may forget, yet will 
I not forget thee." 

And in this growth of religion, the Sabbath 



MORAL AND SPIRITUAL CREATIONS. Ill 



becomes more sacred. We keep its " rest/' for 
rest is proclaimed in a law of human nature, 
older than Babylonian legends or Aecadian star- 
worship. We keep the human er meanings of 
u refreshment " and social recreation, which the 
Hebrews gave the day. But still more sacredly 
we keep the reverence to which the Sabbath has 
been consecrated. And as we lose its old sanc- 
tion, and see that the Creator has never ** rested 
from all his work/' but " worketh hitherto " and 
now and forever, in this Infinite Creation, our 
reverence grows beyond the Sabbath and tills 
the week. The " seventh day " of the story, 
like the others, becomes ever present. In the 
midst of this Unending Genesis, and embosomed 
in this Eternal Law, Life and Love, we feel that 
every day is "blessed and sanctified." 



013 502 394 2 




It 



